True Biz, my new book, is a thoroughly Deaf novel, in character, plot and form. Lately, as I travel and speak with readers about True Biz, I’ve finally been able to verbalise what has always been true, even when I was unwittingly fighting against it: I would not have become a writer without ASL. For some, this seems counterintuitive, since I write in English. But language bears more than the work of communicating with the mainstream world; it is also the internal vehicle for our thoughts and feelings, the mechanism through which we understand ourselves. Without first having had ASL, I would not have understood myself as a person with a story to tell. True Biz” by Sara Novic opened my eyes to the deaf community and their struggles. I did not know how disenfranchised the community is. This is a beautiful story that shows how deaf adolescents struggle with mainstream academia. Most important for me is the information regarding the cochlear implants. The history of that device is frightening. One theme is the idea of River Valley closing. The students will have to return to their home school districts. Through Charlie, we see her moving through her educational system. Because she can only hear about 60% of the words, Charlie doesn’t always know what is going on in the classroom. The teacher assume that she is slow, and she is placed in special education. Eventually, she is put into the mainstream classrooms with little support. She tries to steel herself for the press, to choose words that might tamp down the frenzy, or at least not add any fuel. “Lost” is wrong; she shouldn’t say that—she hasn’t misplaced them. They escaped, more like it, though that makes the school sound like prison. “Runaways” is charged with a certain angst, suggests abuse. Eventually she settles on “gone missing,” the passive obscuring responsibility. For those who loved the Oscar-winning film CODA, a boarding school for deaf students is the setting for a kaleidoscope of experiences."- The Washington Post

I would say the weakest character is February. It’s never really explained why her marriage has gotten stale (and maybe that’s the point). I wanted more of her life as a CODA and the decision to work with Deaf students. Maybe I missed it but I just didn’t feel her storyline was as well-rounded as the other two. YA Thank you Sara Novic for illuminating me to the deaf community and culture. I learned so much! Plus, the story is engaging in it’s own right. i learned SOOOOO MUCH from this book. definitely one of the most educational stories i have read in awhile and i dont think it would be an over-exaggeration to say this should be required reading.Then, about halfway through my graduate studies, a professor assigned us The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I still remember the flutter of excitement in my stomach the moment I realised those characters were deaf. The school doesn’t want to pay for specialized, effective services. The first solution seems to be trying to throw technology at a student. Why teach spelling when you can just thrust an iPad into a student’s hands? I have no doubt that a school district would try something similar for a deaf student. Also, at least at the Troy School District, special education does not report to the building principle. Special Education reports to the Director of Special Education who sits in a Central Building. In other words, the boss of Special Education is not even in the same building as the Special Education teachers. There is almost no oversight. I thought Charlie had the strongest character arc as she goes from feeling quite isolated both among the hearing and the Deaf to becoming much more comfortable with who she is and learning to stand up for what she believes in. She received a cochlear implant when she was very young but it’s never really worked properly. When she got it, the push was not to learn sign language as various medical professionals believed that it would impair her ability to absorb verbal language. Sara Novic is one of the best writers of my generation—not just the novelist of Deaf culture, but of human nature writ large. Do yourself a favor and get this book—it is inimitable.” —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

At any rate, as I said in my introduction, True Biz is a book that needs to be read—now. Novic has powerful stories to tell and a great deal to teach hearing readers. I may not buy entire cases of True Biz, but I will almost certainly be buying multiple copies of this title to share with others. But don’t the teachers have to meet certain goals? In theory, yes. But in reality, the teachers are the ones filling out the goal reports (magically they always meet their goals). The teachers can put their hands on the scale. They can prompt the student, even providing answers to write down. The teachers are evaluating themselves. But… the story itself was meh. While real issues were examined in Charlie and Austin’s lives, not enough time was spent on them. I wanted the focus to be on student lives. The headmaster had way too much focus on her personal problems and frankly, I didn’t care. Towards the end another student’s perspective is added and it was great! For those who loved the Oscar-winning film CODA, a boarding school for deaf students is the setting for a kaleidoscope of experiences.”— The Washington PostMany Government officials and legistrators do not comply with the Individual Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal law that protects the students who are deaf and hard of hearing receive a free public appropriate public education. Here's why not. Because a) ASL is a language with an absolutely unique grammatical structure that my romance-language learning self was completely unprepared for and b) ASL, like any language, isn't just a communication system—it's the lynch pin of an entire community—and really learning ASL requires integrating one's self into the culture of that community as fully as possible. I learned that signing ASL was not something I could even begin to accomplish with a few semesters of community college classes. And I learned how absolutely remarkable were both my students who were determined to function in two vastly different languages and cultures and the translators working with them. February, the school's headmistress, is the hearing daughter of deaf parents, who is fully fluent in both spoken English and ASL. As a child, she found navigating between the noisy world of public school and the lively, but silent world of her parents painful both physically and emotionally. The Deaf world is no longer her safe haven but her place of employment, and at the moment she is screwed. As headmistress, she is supposed to have her finger on the pulse of the school. Instead, she has done the worst thing possible—she has lost other people’s children. Two boys, Austin Workman and Eliot Quinn, a sophomore and a junior, roommates.

Award-winning author Sara Nović’s second novel’s rooted in her experiences in the Deaf with a capital "D" community. It takes three characters, all connected to a school for the Deaf in a rundown area of Ohio. The central characters are headteacher February who lives with her wife on campus, the hearing child of deaf adults (CODA); Charlie a teenager whose hearing parents have brought her up in seclusion from Deaf culture; and Austin her classmate who comes from a family that has included deaf members for generations. The plot revolves around the conflicts that arise between parents and children, in a system that routinely privileges educational mainstreaming and “assimilation” into hearing society. February is hearing but is headmistress of a Deaf school. Did you have any concerns about this? Why or why not? In confident, funny prose, True Bizasks the question of all questions: Who are my people?And then, with enormous attunement to the embodied experience of beingdeaf and being human, answers it.” —Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow GirlONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022— Publisher’s Weekly, Washington Post, NPR, Booklist, Audible, Goodreads In confident, funny prose, True Biz asks the question of all questions: Who are my people?And then, with enormous attunement to the embodied experience of beingdeaf and being human, answers it.” —Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl Tender, beautiful, and radiantly outraged….This important novel should—true biz—change minds and transform the conversation.” — Maile Meloy, the New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

The plotting in True Biz, which I've been carefully tiptoeing around in hopes of avoiding spoilers, is rich, complicated by issues like educational funding, concerns about the "ebbing" (again, my term) of deaf culture, and anarchism. Every character is living a driven life, one that is based on resistance to the status quo. Reading True Biz was a transformative experience—it’s as important a book as I’ve read in years. I was in awe of the care and love and hard-won wisdom that went into the writing of it. Sara Novic is the real deal.” —Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours Not now! she wants to scream. Yours is a mess for another day. But she holds it together, says instead: Secondly, the book mentions that deafness can be hereditary, that with genome editing it can be eradicated, there is nothing wrong with being deaf, and there is no need for “designer babies.” What kind of responsibility did February have growing up as the child of Deaf parents? How are her childhood experiences similar to those of children of immigrants?The book starts when Charlie is a troubled teen and her parents divorce. Custody is awarded to Charlie's father, who has more sympathy with Charlie's plight than her mother. One of his first decisions is to enroll Charlie in a residential School for the Deaf. The head mistress of the school (named February) is herself a hearing adult child of deaf parents. She is a passionate advocate for her students. February tells Charlie is that she has been speech deprived and that learning ASL will change this. But it hasn’t always been this way. I wrote my first novel, published in 2015, while I was a student on a graduate writing course. Each day, my classmates and I gathered on the fourth floor of Columbia University’s Dodge Hall to be taught the craft of writing and discern what constituted a book or story’s “worth”. I was the only deaf person there. A coming-of-age story that explores the complexities of community and the ways in which language defines us.